For anyone else who wants to start/progress/finish writing a book in 2011

[artifarti]

As the title says really!

Me: After several years of dithering with short stories, I committed myself to Nanowrimo last month and managed to bash out a 50,000 first draft of an idea I've had for ages. There is some excrutiating crap in there but also the bare bones of a plot and some interesting characters. So I'd really like to spend 2011 trying to develop it into something better.

But I need some company so that we can mutually kick each other's arses when the temptation to watch Holby City is proving too great. Anyone else?

[UnquietDad]

schroedingers - no, 3 TV-related novels, for "family" audience, 3 novels for adults, non-fiction for adults, and my newest book (the one I am redrafting) will be my first children's novel in my own right (it's for 9-13).

[schroedingersdodo]

Hi Unquietdad, that sounds interesting, how long have you been writing for?

I've written lots of short stories, but nothing longer than that. I'm currently drafting my first novel, and finding the plotting a bit difficult.

Well, I think the ideas haven't 'clicked' yet. Must try harder, I guess :)

[grumpypants]

Hi - I'm back, having reread the Cornerstones report. Am going to redrraft the kids book, just joined AW Year Book online, and am plotting an adult novel. What really makes me cross with myself is that there was a moment when I should have jumped in (I'd just won a Young Journalist comp, had some stuff in the uni paper, and then runner up in a magazine) but I was too tied up with marriage and baby. So now I feel so old and any prev success is so out of touch to start again.

[grumpypants]

Also, my big what's the point, i'll clean the house thing is all the sleb stuff coming out - I just wonder if the slush pile thing is a big deterrent as I have no connections. OTOH I did get good feedback from picking picked out of it [wanders off in a dithering sort of wittering on mood]

[schroedingersdodo]

grumpypants well, if you were that talented a couple of years ago, now you are talented and more experienced. Better prepared for whatever you want, I reckon.

I feel a bit old for lots of things as well, but sometimes being old(er) brings other perspectives and it's an advantage. I should have written my novel before I decided to have a family, as I had more time then. But now that I have less time for myself, I also have more discipline.

Things don't happen when you want, but when you are ready / when things are meant to happen.

And I should stop babbling self-help platitudes and go write.

[artifarti]

I know what you mean about the sleb stuff grumpy! I went into Waterstones last week to try and buy a copy of Jonathan Franzen's new novel for my DP. I knew it was still in hardback so it wouldn't be swimming in copies but it has received amazing reviews. There wasn't a single copy to be found in the store and practically all of their hardbacks were sleb-related - either written by or about someone 'famous'. Says it all really.

However, I think it is our job to lead the fightback! To wipe the shelves clean of Katie Price! Seriously, if you enjoy it plus you have had some good feedback, let the house fester and crack on! (Says me who has two weeks off work and doesn't seem to have written a single word yet...)

[grumpypants]

Thank you Schroeder - that's v kind (and hopefully true!). Arti - I know, I just need to get out of the It's not fair thing. At least I have read thro the report, and drafted a synopsis for the new book.

[sethstarofbethlehemsmum]

Grumpypants - I know what you mean about worrying you have missed the moment. When I was finishing off my PhD (about 10 years ago now) I had a story in a student anthology and as a result got approached by a commissioning editor from a major literary fiction label. She liked the novel I was working on but I never finished it to my satisfaction and decided to focus on my PhD and the academic career. I had one of those 'which path shall I take?' moments where I had to decide whether to stay in and finish the thesis chapter I had promised my supervisor for the next day or go to meet a well-known writer who was a friend of a friend and was offering to talk to her agent about me. I stayed in and finished the thesis chapter and was an academic for 9 years....
Frankly though I don't think I'd have had the maturity to deal with attempting a career as tough as writing at that stage; if I'd failed at that point it would have been harder to pick myself up whereas now I think I'm in a position to deal with the reversals with more equanimity.

Re the thing about too many books being by (or 'by') and about slebs, I don't really feel I'm in a position to complain, or worry, about that until I have actually written some wonderful books and failed to find a publisher for them etc etc. At this stage it seems rather premature. Anyhow if all else fails we can all ghostwrite the sleb ones, right?

[UnquietDad]

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, but published since 1993. So I've averaged a book every 18 months or so. I recently looked back over my writing career and realised I'd either had a contract or a book out in the shops, or both, every year since then apart from 2000 - the year DD was born!

[UnquietDad]

There is a theory that the plethora of sleb books means that the publishers can afford to stay afloat and invest in lesser-known writers...

Plus they give a lot of work to ghost-writers!

I just wish more of the reading public would realise that these slebs don't write their own words. I'd imagine Wayne Rooney's grasp of written English is about on a par with my tackling skills.

[artifarti]

So, UnquietDad - any tips for second drafting?

[littlevoice83]

I would like to make a start on my novel i have been trying to write for a few years. Since the kids now go to my aunts on a tue after noon i shall make that my desinated writing time!

[UnquietDad]

Everyone "drafts" in their own way, to be honest... I do so as I go along! Some people I know have definitely found the Stephen King advice useful - to put it away and look at it after two months.

[UnquietDad]

grumpypants - you have to remember the slush pile is not all "competition" for a decent writer who has produced a good novel and done their homework about where to submit it.

Most of the slush pile is dire. Not just in need of "polishing" or work - just unpublishable. As in never-publishable. Think of The X-Factor. If Joe McElderry and Leona Lewis are your published writers - people who can actually sing even if they may not necessarily be to your taste - then 85-90% of the slush pile is composed of those people who open their mouths and sound like a screeching banshee. You just know within a bar or two that they are never, ever going to be a professional singer. Similarly, there are people who betray within a sentence or two that they are never going to be a professional writer. Even before that, though, they betray their unprofessionalism through their presentation of the work: green ink, coloured paper, handwritten covering letters, glitter, fluffy borders, pictures of cats, admissions that the first few chapters are not the best...

(You get the odd "Cher Lloyd" writer - gets a lot of people's backs up, some argue they're useless but some can see the potential and will fight for it!)

A real slap in the face is being rejected after being published! That's something I was never warned about, but it happens to everyone. Ten years ago it came as a real shock. I suppose that shows a bit of arrogance on my part - these days I am more stoic about it. You are only ever as good as your last book - or your next one.

[grumpypants]

Thank you unquietdad that is really interesting. I just imagined a toering in tray of talent, and agents using it to mop up coffee spills!

[UnquietDad]

twopeople:
No, I was just referring to being a published author, getting two novels with a publisher and then your agent being unable to place the next. This happened to me twice - with an adult book in 1999 and then with my first attempt at a children's novel 9 years ago. You shouldn't assume a first novel published is a "foot in the door" - because it isn't, necessarily...

But what you mention, that's another issue entirely - a book being published and then people not being able to find it in bookshops. Not even that the bookshops "refuse" to stock it - that might make it a minor "cause célèbre" - but just that they aren't bothered enough to do so. (The UK publishes more books per head than any other country - about 200,000 in the last year for which there are records - and only about 140,000 of these end up on the shelves of physical bookshops.)

Or it has, allegedly, been taken by Waterstone's and nobody can find it. Or you tell all your friends and colleagues to go and ASK for it, and all they do is wander into WHSmith (where it was never going to be anyway), gaze at the shelves, and, unable to find it, wander out again. Then they tell you about six weeks later, "oh, I went into the shop to look for your book and I couldn't find it... What's it called again?"

[strandednomore]

Hi - just marking my place, need to catch up on this thread. We've just moved back to the UK and I haven't really had time to put pen to paper but really want to get on with it. The dd's will be back at school/playgroup next week - but unfortunately I will have a LOT less time to myself than I am used to so will have to be very disciplined. I also want to get cracking on a non-fiction idea that I have.

[OMaLittle]

Hello, may I join? I'm about 85k into my third book (technically my third started book, and my first finished book - didn't get beyond 10k with the others). I'm pretty sure its execrable with around 4-5 good sentences. We've had loads of upheaval lately and are currently living with the in-laws (week 9 and counting), so am really struggling to get anything done. Started it 18 months ago and feel very far from some of the text. It is plotted but I do worry that it's no more than a series of half-finished portraits of vaguely interlinking characters (or perhaps the characterisation is thin/non-existent enough for them to be mistaken for several people with the same names). Also had a bit of a shock lately when I saw Alex Preston on the Review Show and 'D'H looked him up and said 'Oh my god, look, he's totally written your book!', then passed over the laptop with an airy '...and he's a year younger than you.' It's silly, because of course it's not exactly the same, but his is, like, really good. Perhaps I should be positive and hope that he's just started a new genre of credit crunch/affluenza lit. Oh, and he's saved me the job of writing a synopsis.

Sorry, rambling. Just really need support! Well done to all of you, inspirational to hear stories of publication and competition successes! I've showed very little to anyone ever, and had one vicious (and very, very funny) critique of a short story.

[OMaLittle]

Oh, and it's not finished yet. That was positive thinking.

[Litchick]

Happy New Year everyone.
Time to sharpen those pencils and dust the crisp crumbs off the key board.

As most of you know, I signed off the proofs of my latest book just before xmas.

I've enjoyed a break but now have to crack on with the next, which is due to be subbed to my ed before Easter.

It's plotted, and I've written about 20k words of it, but am gonna have to get my arse in gear.

[belledechocchipcookie]

Happy New Year.

I've finished the first book of a monster today. It's 25k long (it's a kiddy lit) I'm really happy with it.

[ninah]

belle? 25k? do tell
phoenix series?
2 Jan and I am a respectable 2k in to part 2 of mine

[belledechocchipcookie]

Typical teenage lad, loves his mum but wants some independance and he wants to do things to help her. They go on holiday for a weekend and he finds an egg. He doesn't know what it is so spends ages trying to identify it. In the last bookshop he finds someone who listens to him rather then assumes he's a taking the piss teenager. He's told to put it back before it hatches but it's too late. There's someone looking for the Phoenix, an evil hunter who wants to kill it so he can absorb the power, become immortal and change life as we know it into something evil. Needless to say it all goes tits up for the poor lad. He makes a friend who almost kills him, this friend is then brutally killed by the phoenix in a ball of flames while he's still alive. Is this a tad too graphic for a 14 year old??
I recon it's 'edgy'. He's not found his mother yet and he's still got to find out how to defeat the Phoenix hunter.

2k is great!!Keep at it.